I want God to ignite my words with a match made in Heaven so that they burn in the heart of everyone who reads them or hears them, making them a furnace that spreads God’s warmth and light around the world.

Jesus is living in all His followers. So why does church require silence from everybody but “the pastor”? I’ve discovered that a church meeting full of people preaching Christ is more powerful than a church full of people listening to one man preach.

All soliloquy and no dialogue can make a dull meeting. A church service can be so tightly run that there’s no room for Jesus.Spiritual family isn’t cultivated by continual lecture but by heart-to-heart interaction.

All Christ-followers are called to preach the Gospel and operate in the gifts of the Spirit–not just a pastor on Sunday morning. However, church almost always makes one person the minister and everybody else passive consumers of his ministry. Don’t just be a sermon-hearer. Proclaim and live the Gospel yourself! Church often chooses to be a stage for a soloist instead of a platform for God’s orchestra. However, a Christian leader is called to be a servant who puts others ahead of self, not a celebrity-like expert who tries to keep all the attention on himself.

Church that doesn’t demonstrate Jesus and facilitate personal interaction with Him is like an ice cream party with no ice cream. Hearing a weekly commentary about Christ is quite different than childlike delight in Christ. When one person dominates a meeting, everyone else is forced into the role of spectator.

How can we expect Jesus to transform our culture if we won’t even let Him transform church?Numerical growth without growth in Christ-like maturity, godly character, and spiritual power, is merely an illusion of progress.

I believe that God wants church to be more than it usually is. I believe that He wants it to be an actual demonstration of the presence and direct control (kingdom) of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ. When Christ-followers gather and let Jesus, Himself, actually run the meeting, amazing and supernatural things begin to happen. Jesus can lead a worship gathering so much more effectively than a merely human leader can. My heart breaks that Jesus isn’t allowed to do more in churches.

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About Steve Simms

I like to look and think outside the box. In college I encountered Jesus Christ and I have been passionate about trying to get to know Him better ever since. My wife and I co-lead a non-traditional expression of the body of Christ in Nashville based on open participation and Spirit-led sharing. We long to see the power and passion of the first Christ-followers come to life in our time. I have written a book about our experiences called, "Beyond Church: An Invitation To Experience The Lost Word Of The Bible--Ekklesia" that is available in Kindle & paperback @ http://amzn.to/2nCr5dP